High School Senior Photography

Lesson 24 of 32

Workflow

High School Senior Photography

Lesson 24 of 32

Workflow

Lesson Info

Workflow

Let's, do this. So welcome to day three and today we're going to close the loop on everything. So what we're going to do is we're going to cover the sales process. Postproduction, right? You got all these great images. What are you going to do with them when you get home? Are you going to turn them around quickly? How quickly do we get them in our client's hands? How quickly do we, uh, edit them? What do we add it? How do we get it? That's? Very, very important. Uh, then we're going to take you through the sales process. Live sales process. The client will be coming in. We'll be bringing kendra and her mom into the studio to show you exactly how we do the sales process, but added bonus for you guys today I reworked this schedule and we're going to end the day I saw a lot of questions coming in on understanding cost of goods. And then what product should I incorporate into those packages? So we covered your packages in your pricing day one. But so many questions air coming in, not only ...

from you guys, but out there. You guys are asking the same questions, okay, sal, I'm just starting out howto why price my work? So we're going to end this day don't miss out at the end of this day, right? I know it's going to intense a lot information but hang on till the end of the day because we're going to drill into what products to carry and how to sell them and how to prise him so let's get started let's talk workflow high level because I think understanding your workflow eyes going to help you work through the process and how long it should take so you've gotta at least have that workflow written down in your mind wherever you want to put it, but think about your work phone I don't know how many of you were thinking about your work full bobby curious after I write this down if this is what you follow and for the record there's no right or wrong answer for your workflow there's books this thick written on workflow that you could make yourself crazy trying to adhere to every step of the process this is my work full this is what works for me, okay, so I'm gonna preface it that way because I'm pretty sure online we're gonna get tons of questions on well, why do you do this? Why don't you do that? The reason I do all of it is because this is what works for me and my business so that being said, step one right we're going to shoot and I think there's a shooting workflow when it comes to senior. So for us, I like to shoot one hundred to one hundred twenty five images per outfit. Now, if you're just tuning in today and you missed yesterday, then that's, probably your your about your head is about to explode right now. Right? That's. A lot of images. I know photographers that will only show sixty images from an entire session. And here I am encouraging you, teo. Teo, capture one hundred to one hundred twenty five images. So per outfit. I will take one hundred to one hundred twenty five images. Now, if you if you remember yesterday tight, middle wide, right, horizontal, vertical, you can easily see how between going tight, mental wide, horizontal, vertical, a small smile, big smile, and then a sassy look. You could get to one hundred images in about ten or fifteen minutes. I mean, that is very easy for me to get there. And so yesterday, we kind of drilled into that detail. So hopefully, you guys are feeling confident that you can pull this off, and maybe you don't hit one hundred hundred twenty five, but you're finding your own rhythm, right? That was the word of the day yesterday is just rhythm rhythm rhythm you've got to get into that safety zone get your safety shots get the shots you know you can sell then experiment okay and we experimented when we went on the roof yesterday and we were experimenting but it took a little bit longer right? So when you're using off camera flash and we were photographing yesterday it took a little bit longer to get to the shot right? I had her constantly stepping again again again if I had started her first outfit that way it would've been painful because she didn't have a chance to build her confidence so working quickly with this system I'm teaching you here is going to build confidence not only a za'atar for but it's also gonna build that confidence with your subject so now when I take her on the roof and the winds blowing and she's getting frustrated and I'm making her do the same pose over and over again she's like I'm cool because I know sounds already done all this other stuff right? I showed her in the back camera so be conscious of that don't start with your toughest outfit or posing first let the kid let your subject work into that on and you'll have that confidence so one hundred hundred twenty five images per outfit within the one hundred, one hundred twenty five images I've got to get my let's call my safety shots okay? Um uh then I need to have my what I call signature shots now for the signature shots that's that one? We went up on the roof, and I posted that on the creative live site with the the space needle in the background, I would call that a signature shot right and invest a little bit more time in that edit it. So if we can bring that up, you'll see it had we've got texture on it. We give it a little bit of an hd are high, dynamic range, and we'll get into that style added off camera flashed at drama to the shot that I have to get that if I don't have the signature shots, this is where understanding the whole process works together. So this works hand in hand with what taylor is going to do to sell right are two most common sizes that we sell ar fifteen by thirty and a sixteen by twenty four these are the most popular size is out of our studio, and I covered this day one right thes air our most popular sizes. Why is that one of those two sizes so important in my mind, they're important because they will fit in any home in america, so our studio was built foundation aly on those two sizes. Remember what I told you? Our average senior spends about two thousand dollars in our studio. Well, they're spending two thousand dollars it's not coming in and buying one giant four foot canvas that's not what our clients are doing there's buying fifteen by thirty sixteen by twenty fours what does that mean? That means if I can do it in st louis blue collar america you can do it anywhere. I promise you because these are reasonable sizes, but you've gotta shoot for that size that's where your safety shots and your signature shots coming to play. So ah fifteen by thirty a long skinny, whether horizontal, vertical and for the record, that space needle shot is edited fifteen by thirty. So it's a long skinny vertical that has been edited for that fifteen by thirty if I don't do this out in the field when we sit down for the sales process, taylor is not gonna be able to make that sale because the client's gonna go well, there's nothing really that fits into that size. Okay and that's very important. So it's very important and understanding what's happening in the field is impacting you in the sales room. You guys with me shoot to sell, we can't just go out there and see so many photographers use go out there and they're wandering around there like oh oh that's pretty well that's pretty yeah it's all pretty make a decision take a shot get it done because we've got to come back to the sales room okay so first thing we're gonna do is we're gonna go out there shoot everybody with me alright step two way need to have the uh creative live marker upgrades here alright step to here we go we're going to come home she say download slash back up this is actually a very important step don't wait days and let your memory card sit on your desk okay take it from me I'm gonna tell you a story here uh not proud of it but just in the spirit of sharing it happens to all of us I get so overwhelmed sometimes when I'm shooting I'm going back until like two thousand eight so overwhelmed shooting we were coming in three, four shoot today and we were using four or eight gig memory cards at the time. So on a given senior chute engagement shoot it was possible for me to go through like five to eight cards depending on what I could get on the car especially shooting raw and so I swapped out my cards and I put one in my pocket ok, now you guys saw me yesterday even though you know celeste had me on raines I'm laying in the street, I'm running all over the place well this particular day I was at an old abandoned church and I was laying on my side on one of the staff shooting up taking this great shot we get home that night okay? And because I go through this process the minute I get home I realized I was missing a memory card if I had waited two days to go through this process maybe I remember maybe I don't but if I do remember it's too late literally eleven o'clock at night I'm bolting back over to downtown st louis okay because I knew what happened I mean, I just knew it I knew it's like when you leave your wallet somewhere right r or your watch like I remember I remember laying on that step I go right back to that church it's like eleven, twelve o'clock at night now pitch black you know, we were out there with flashlights right where I was laying on the step my memory card was sitting okay and it it just started to rain which made it worse, right it's like not even a believable story at this point. So oh, my god, guys, this has to happen immediately get home, download back up your images so let's talk about this what's my work flow from a download backup perspective so I've got what I call a production drive and everybody at home you need to start adapting something to this effect okay? And then we have a backup drive remember what I said a few days go on and at the time you mean maybe you didn't hear it I've never deleted a single image hard drives air so inexpensive at this point just keep buying them in fact around little little trick to save you some money every time black friday rainey was black friday right? Right after thanksgiving massive sales the one thing that seems to go on sale all the time hard drive's right on black friday so I will go to my local elektronik store on black friday and I'm getting two, three hundred dollar drives for ninety nine dollars I'm not kidding you I will actually go in and buy seven to ten external hard drives for backup and so what we'll do is I've never deleted a single image we keep those hard drives and then when they're when they're filled way rotate in new new drive so let me get through this so what's gonna happen is I'm working off a production driver this is the drive I'm editing from right? So I'm editing from an external drive light room is fast enough ah usb to firewire whatever you can do whatever you can afford but I'm editing often external drive so that's my production drive so let's just call it um let's you say kendra now my naming convention I don't know kendra's last name and you guys don't need to know it but my my uh my naming convention would be client last name let's just assume for the second it's kendra it would be kendra the month so it's seven twelve so seven, twelve senior chute okay, so I want to look at that folder and you come up with your own naming convention, okay? I don't care what you come up with but come up with a consistent naming convention that you're following for your client's both for seniors, families, babies how can you go into your directory of dozens and dozens of chutes and not spend twenty minutes trying to find your images? Don't just dump them into a picture folder so I adopt client last name date type of shoot you guys with me super super simple the final images in this production drive I dump all the raw files so they all get dumped into this as soon as this is completed on this production drive. Okay, that very same night I create a backup to a secondary, totally separate backup drive totally separate. I'm not backing up to dvd. I'm not backing up to ct dude, you will for a wedding, you might have eighteen dvds that you're backing up to and then good luck trying to find those images on one dvd was that on again you'll never find him so back up to a deed to a full hard drive everybody with me so far once his backup drive has been filled this back of dr gets stuck in a ziploc bag okay and then goes off to a safety deposit box and so this goes out of our location so our backup drive is always one hundred percent separate from our home god forbid something were to happen fire flood whatever the case may be so this drive is going to have a totally separate home these images now we'll have live into distinctive locations when this folder if your mac user when this folder gets backed up okay, I can I change the color green she can actually color code your files right? I changed that color green so that I know these files these folders have been backed up riel simple backup strategy another tip another trick. How do you find these images let's say something happens we've had it happened over and over again we use a tool called cd finder cd finder this tool I'm going to say it's nineteen to twenty nine dollars it's meant it was meant for people add like cd collections and then you can you can inventory your cds while we use it for our hard drives brilliant by the way so once your hard drive is full it catalogs your hard drive so you don't have to have all these usb drives plugged into your system they can all be disconnected now somebody comes in maybe it's a wedding that hadn't ordered their pictures in two years we've had that happened maybe it's a senior who hasn't come in in eight months and you've removed some of these drives now I just type in the last name smith it will tell me smith is on this drive this drive this folder this location very very powerful uh tool cd finder you have been patiently waiting I think you just answered my question uh so you're not using a base system you're literally using individual drives free to one of these things and I'm assuming even though you didn't see it with your production drive but I think you just mentioned it once your production dr gets full, you move it away and you moved to a new production drivers well that's right? But it's always just two drives are connected external hard drives not abase system like a drove bo or whatever you're literally just using drives and doesn't matter which one it is it could be this guy, that guy whoever is on sale that year yeah that's exactly right? I mean, I I totally have a preference I've found that cj drives external drives tend to last a little bit longer we've had too many western digital drives just fail from a customer support perspective, western digital's being great in oh, it failed will get you a brand new drive, but that doesn't do you any good when the dry fails and all the data's gone on it. So that's, why having this onto drives this has protected us? I mean, I can't tell you how many times we've had a drive fail now remember my background? I worked at microsoft, and so at microsoft, I was in the database group, and so we understood performance on hard drives, so don't get me wrong getting a raid array and and that's going to make stuff move a lot quicker, so we do use that when we're doing video, so we're using video. We've got one of those bays where we've got four, five drives in there, but I find for straight images this has worked for us. The performance has been their light room has done a great job performing for us on dh that's the way we do this. So this has been really, really simple assed faras a download back up process again, it's about simplicity and different things are gonna work for different people. For your backup drives do you send that out like at the end of the week or do you do that? Because I know that sometimes you do like three force you today's does that drive you out at the end of the day? Or do you, like, try and put multiple shoots on the back of that backup drive has to be filled to capacity, so this backup drive this might be a, uh three terabyte drive and this doesn't have to be ah superfast performing drive, by the way. So, I mean, this just has to be, uh, some because you're not really working from it's truly there for backup, but this, you know, the production drive this could be anywhere from a one terabyte also to ah three terabyte drive again this drive my production drive I'm looking for more of a performance, dr so I wanted to be faster, right? So for those of you out there who are overwhelmed by what you're looking at on the side of a box it's all about rpm's okay, so how fast are those platters spinning? You don't want a fifty six hundred drive, so you want to seventy two hundred or faster drive so seventy two hundred rpm um that's the speed of the drive you're looking for, so get a usb too usb three right? Max, don't support that yet firewire is going to be a little bit more expensive, but if you get a usb to drive at seventy, two hundred that is going to perform on, allow youto work off that drive, right? If you get some of those inexpensive, small, portable drives it's not gonna work it's there too slow. So these air your normal size external ah, hard drives. So a true hard drive, not a little tiny portable one, but let's, go to some question, because I can only I know that when I teach this people a lot of this and I'm aware of it flies in the face of what people out there are teaching u s o remember in these file folders, these air, all raw files at this point, they've not been converted to j paige's d angie's, none of that stuff. I only care about the digital negative at this point, so as long as I have that raw file, I'm always going to be happy. So so on that note, uh, aunt, one photo who is in bulgaria has asked if you, um, if you convert to dmg and keep them that way, I am not a d n g, I'm not there, man, so it sounds really great in concept, but to me it's an extra step the files or huge it's just not something that I have found any value in doing to me it's I hate saying it it's about simplicity and it's about what works for my business so converting this like doomsday mentality into a dmg files because that's what it is right it's like end a world uh if the raw engines never work again you've got tng okay I don't see that happening anytime soon so I'm not wasting my storage space or anything like that. I'm staying purely raw at this point so what? They hate mail? Okay a couple people have asked see valadez from tampa have you ever used an online company for backing up your images such as carbonite and r w y drove from snohomish also asked to use off site storage at all yes we just started doing that that is an awesome question stokke let's talk about your exposure here no one's really picked up on it yet because I know I'm moving a little quick if all I've got on my raw files backed up at this point right? So the truth is I backed this up the day the image was taken however by the time the client comes in there's going to be edits that have been done to those images j pegs that have been created to order files I've removed acne enhanced eyes whatever you're doing to your images worst case scenario here I don't have those images if my main production drive fails I do not have the edited image which I'm okay with by the way because I can always go back to the original but as we all know there's a lot of work that goes into editing those files so what we've done now is we have created on our main drive we have created one folder and this is called the edits folder in that edits folder whenever I'm done editing a client's job okay, so now I convert him the j paige because you can't order raw files from any of the labs you order in jpeg format when I convert him to j peg I dumped them all to this edit folder that's where I tie carbonite or there's a slew of different backup cos it backs up this one folder so now in a third worst case scenario my j peg files are offside nowhere near my raw files and I've got all my files the j pegs the files were going order from that have been processed skin soft and all that stuff are in a set totally separate location out in the cloud so yes, they're talking about being able to do like all your raw files and unlimited holy cow that thing will be backing up for like you know the rest of your life trying to you know, do three terabytes of data uh it'll take forever so d j pegs I'm happy doing it that way so that's a very good question a question from wed photo rove why not using a raid one mirror system and then also right dro and e breathed have you considered solid state for a production drive? Both both are viable options of course if you've got unlimited budget so solid state very expensive solution and uh you know the raid array again a very expensive solution and not very scalable so if you follow my process I'm not the leading any images so every time you need more images you're either removing out and putting it plugging back into a raid array or you're getting a brand new raid array so this is again simplicity ah in a process that works it's very difficult to find exposure I think in this process so nothing wrong with that process but it's gonna cost a little bit more money to implement and I think for the kind of do it yourself get it done simplicity this works cool all right sonny would from quebec asked why are you working on from an external drive instead of from your computer? Same process so the reason I'm working from that external drive because I'm not the leading images I don't have to open up my case every time I fill up a new hard drive so that's the main reason trust me I get it an internal hard drive in a bay is much faster than an external hard drive, right? You're dealing with the channel at that point, usb two is going to slow you down the connection speed verse being plugged into your driving it's stayed on all that other stuff, so you know, we're talking technical mumbo jumbo right now, so I get it internal is faster, but it's not without process issues because again, I don't think the average person wants to open up their case and plug in a brand new hard drive every time it fills up. So if you are purging your hard drives, raid system is fine. Internal drive is fine, but I'm not purging my drives. I literally keep every image I've ever taken. Now the question in the audience go ahead. Sorry. Um you're not deleting anything the blinkers that nothing nothing, no storage spaces so inexpensive right now. Literally you can you can pick up a two to three terabyte external drive ninety nine bucks, one hundred twenty nine bucks it would it's not worth my time to sit there and go delete images when it's really costing me hardly anything per megabyte of storage so that's why I don't do it to me, it's a waste of time, so from catherine adams you delete from your production drive after you back up so you only have one backup source correct that if one dr fails everything is gone and then let's see, we also have a question about from malaysia so you don't see the need for triple quadruple back up so let's just clarify how many? Yes, always two backups I never delete a single image so not even on my production drive will that image ever be deleted so it's not gonna be the lead from production not going to be deleted from backup so I always have it in two spots uh let's step back a second part of my job and I was at microsoft was working with companies. I mean, largest companies in the world fedex international paper, coca cola on data recovery strategies there's a host of issues that could happen you can never prepare for every single issue. Well, I take that back, you can prepare for every single issue but there's a price associated with it, right? You say, well, what if there's an earthquake? What if there's a fire? What if there's a fire at your house and at the safety deposit box and your mom comes in on a spaceship from mars? We'll all these things I guess are possible, okay, but at the end of the day we've got to figure out what is reasonable in our world? I feel that it is reasonable that if I have these images in two completely separate locations I am protected from ninety eight percent of you know what could possibly happen could my house catch on fire and the bank flood in the same week? I guess but if that does happen and we've got bigger issues right that's more like end a world scenario and I don't think anyone's looking for their pictures at that point in time, right? They're the world's on fire and they're like, dude, you got that one head shot we took of my daughter no that's not gonna happen, so I feel like this scenario it's always in two spots, okay? And then worst case I've got in the third spot, the edited file uh, so I've really, truly god, I mean, how many clients are gonna want to go back to the raw file if we have the edited image? So as long as we've got that image, I still feel like we're protected so in three spots I've got these files very easy, simplistic system it's a very simplistic system I think we're protected the internet may have more questions yes let's keep going I fully expected I knew when we started today this was going because there's literally books this thick written on the subject so I've just really kind of dumbed it down have a couple of light room questions richard from the netherlands would like to know if you keep your light room catalog file on an external drive also and juan pepe ass how about backing up your light room catalog? Yes. So the light room catalog is backed up using you know the mac software is back up right? So we're doing that that's happening daily the light room catalog uh is on my desktop and we have one catalog we probably create three to five catalogues a year just depends on how many shoots I do not subscribe for the record to a different catalog pursuit. So that's a nightmare because I could in theory be working on one job exporting that job at a light room I will now as that job's exporting at a light room I'm starting to work my next job and if it was one job her catalog my computer's basically tied up until that job finishes exporting. So I create a catalog and a monitoring performance. You know, light room is great at a lot of things but it's a dog and a lot of things to so you're going to have some performance issues as you keep adding more more images to it light room four for the record has gotten a lot better in performance and so now but I keep monitoring that and there's optimization within light room on howto optimize your catalog. But ultimately, if you start finding that light rooms non responsive or it's crashing it's practice the catalogs getting too big, creating new catalogue and the catalog naming convention should be the same thing. So we call it, you know, um, salvador cincotti. You know, c p sound horse and cart photography underscore catalog underscore january twenty twelve. Okay, march twenty twelve so that I'm keeping those catalogs somewhat simple to figure out. Um, you know what I need when I need it. Question from corina g and c filed. See, val says, how long do you keep all the backups? I mean, how long do we need to keep all these images from years ago? I never delete a single image s so we will hang onto images forever. This sounds like the toughest thing for our audience to process that I am not the leading any images. You've gotta look at it this way. Storage spaces so inexpensive right now, there's no, absolutely no reason to get rid of these images. And so I'm going. I'd rather be safe than sorry. And so that's my way of protecting myself, have I ever had a client come back four years later, five years later to look for an image? No but again I don't want invest the time in the leading images and figuring out what should be deleted oh accident emily I deleted the wrong image now I just leave I leave them all out there so it's safety for me do you have a process set up to go back and make sure like the hard job didn't just die on your fail while was stored somewhere something that putting krupp during lee that yeah I mean I'll just once I copy those images over I will then go into that directory and scroll through to make sure all those images are in fact there because max are really good if the image didn't make it over it's ghosted so you'll see that something went wrong in the copy process so that's what I just go through and make a visual I like you you know what I did to make sure everything's there and then I know I've got it so that's all they do is take one more question great one more uh easy question what kind of um how big are the are the memory cards that you use ah that is a really good question today we when we're photographing we will not use anything larger than a sixteen gig card uh now again I'm using a one d s and I'm shooting raw so I can typically get three hundred to five hundred images per card and there's a strategy there crap happens memory cards go bad memory cards get lost, cause sounds laying on the step and it falls out of his pocket. I would not want to photograph a wedding and yeah, I've got my nifty hundred twenty eight gig single memory card and never have to change memory cards but now that car goes corrupt, that card gets lost, somebody steals my bag. I do not want to go to a client be like I have literally lost every single image we captured from your event. So, uh I want to be able to, uh, protect myself and that's my way of protecting myself. So yeah, I got it. It's a hassle? I gotta switch cards every once in a while, but you've got to protect yourself and limit your exposure. So very good question again, I want to highlight for you the way you can cat catalog all this stuff is through that application called cd finder. So just go out on the internet. Google it that's called cd finder. I'm not endorsed by them or anything like that. It's just I want somebody turned me on to this tool, and it makes it super easy to keep track of where all these images are, because over the years, as you can imagine, you will not remember for the life of you where some of those images aren't you and I just wanna point out, folks, that also, if you if this is something that you are struggling with, we have a three day intensive course with jared platt on ultimate light room workflow. And that was could be applied to not just light room, but going through a full day of this workflow on backing up stuff and it's been one of our best sellers. So check that out as well. You know, jared's great at that stuff. I mean, he's, very detail oriented on will take you through the process. Jared pryor. Look at what I'm doing and twitching right now. That's no, no, this is good. This is good. Yes. Looking familiar? Eso eso right from this point now my images are at a place where we are set to go. Right? So maybe I'm not going to work on these images for a few days. Maybe I'm gonna outsource them, which, by the way, we do. So we one hundred percent outsourced and we'll cover this a little bit later. But here's, the thing you have to understand every client that comes through our studio last year, we did over two hundred photo shoots. Every client will see their images in two weeks or less. Two weeks or less I got news for you it's not because I'm sitting there processing these images in fact from the photo shoot yesterday we already have the images edited in less than twenty four hours how do we do that I added a few of them but I outsource them as well so we sent them to evolve at its and those guys worked on some of these images and did amazing things why because my time is better spent running my business not okay sitting in photo shop I might sit in photoshopping added three four five images last thing I want to do sitting photoshopped and added a two three, four hundred image job and if it's a wedding a three four thousand image job that is a waste of your time as business people you do not want to be married to a light room you do not want to be married to photoshopped you should know how to do it you should know it's possible because that helps you with your vision right you remember yes I went on the roof I'm like here's my vision for this shot and I was able to execute on this that vision but if I didn't know what was possible using light room and photoshopped then I wouldn't be able to have that vision does that make sense and I always laugh by the way you two probably appreciate this I have people who are who will get on me they're like well that's not a pure image that's not how that image looked out of camera you know can you imagine if back in the days of like picasso and dali they told them you can only use one kind of ink one kind of brush one kind of campus right that's ridiculous we would never do that so why's artist wise artists are we so concerned with how we get from point a to point b it's still art and that's my flock so my job is to create the best piece of art the best looking image for my client if that's texture that I'm going to text on it if that means it's on campus I'm gonna put it on campus no one no tool should limit us remember I said it yesterday technology should not limit right the creation process technology should enhance the creation process so I fully believe in using all the tools that are available to us to get an image from capture two final help us with our vision so let's go there for a second so I'm going to raise this so what we're gonna do now okay well we're going to now is we're going to come in and we're at the point where these production images are sitting on your drive right and let's just say these air kendra's images so we have kendra here what do you do with kendra? You've got two options you can self at it nothing wrong with that or you can outsource let's talk about both no matter what you do guys you have to have your clients seeing your image is in two weeks if you're missing the two week mark you are losing on the excitement did you see how excited kendra was yesterday when I was showing her those images in the back of her camera can you imagine if I made kendra wait a month month and a half to see your image is my engagement couples they're excited right what's the first thing that happens to you guys I know what happens to me after a photo shoot when you're done and you're high fiving the client you're like dude you rocked it to jeff fun today yeah I had fun that was awesome what's next I know about your client's that's the first question my clients ask every single time what's next and so what's next is very important because oh we'll get to you and we'll have you in some day to see your images or I'll post them online whenever I get to him you're missing out on that momentum making a mistake there is momenta me remember the experience it's all about the experience the experience didn't stop at the photo shoot the experience didn't start on the photo shoot the spirit started on the initial call continued into the photoshoot picking the wardrobe shooting the images going on the roof, doing some death, defying things, lying in the middle of the street, going into an alley right with a port, a potty john or whatever we had in there that was all part of our experience. Well, that experience not over now experience continues into her coming in to see her images. So you imagine having all this mo mentum they're all excited and now it's six weeks before they see their images so I don't care what you do. I don't care if you outsource I don't care if you do it yourself, but whatever you do, two weeks or less has to be your timeline and you guys better be honest cause I know you're probably not hitting that two week mark, so I'm gonna call you out. How long before your client see their images on average? Yeah, mike yep. Yeah, exactly how long? Two weeks you're at two weeks are you doing in yourself? I am doing what are you gonna be able to continue doing it yourself as your business girls? No. Okay, that's good. At least you're being honest about it week we can have now. How are you doing that that's? Amazing I'm doing myself, but I don't have the volume it that's congesting me so far okay you have to be aware that as you grow your business you are not going to be able to do this. So when I was back in two thousand seven when I started out I was doing all my editing no like everything I did came through me right time I'd capacity two thousand eight holy cow our business is business nearly doubled suddenly we weren't showing them images in two weeks we were hitting the five six weeks more and that's when I knew I had to start outsourcing it was because I was lazy. It was because I was slammed with work slammed with marketing slammed with customer calls that's where we need to spend our time so here I am going what do I do? That was my first foray in outsourcing and totally true story I didn't want outsource man I was scared to death to outsource because why were all the same way right? Nobody knows our images like we do right there my images he kick in at it like I connected and there's some truth to that right these are our babies we want to keep him close to us but suddenly I was becoming a bottleneck to the growth of my business there was no way for my business to grow I was in the frickin way I couldn't get out of my own way so I find this uh, outsourcing company, right? What's now evolve at it and I send them my first job. They talked me into it. They do an amazing job. I never send them images for another forty six months. I don't know why I sent him. They didn't create job. I was still too chicken. Let go with these images. Well, then the next thing I knew I had I had a month where we had eight or nine weddings in a single month. That was it. I'm like, okay, I'm gonna send you my weddings, but I'm just still do my engagement sessions and my senior session because I want to feel like I was still part of my own business then the next thing I know, I'm like, okay, I'm a singer my weddings in my engagement sessions, but I'm still gonna do my seniors. Well, next thing I knew, they were doing everything for us and I've never looked back. So we look it outsourcing as an extension of our own staff and it's a beautiful thing, by the way, because when you slow down in january, I'm not paying anybody. I'm not paying any staff, I only pay them per job, so and then, as I get super busy, I don't have to worry about hiring two editors three editors that's on them they handle that scale ability that growth so we definitely want to consider that as you grow ok so as a former shooting burner yeah I can say that you know people told me you better change something and I got to the point where I was so stressed out about this stuff I woke up one day my left arm was numb I was having a heart problem I thought I was having a heart attack from the stress is doing all the other from doing all the editing I was basically proofing everything now I at this point I am soft proofing everything that the client sees but I mean I think we get to this and I know I'm friends with a lot of photographers I know we get so but the outsourcing I mean it takes time it's a process it's not just you send it I mean they've got to get your processing down so do you have any any advice for those of us that want to start doing this but I have had maybe I personally I know three girls that have tried it in the last month and their images came back horrible so what can we do is photographers for this? That is a great question so let's talk about what to expect when you outsource I think the problem when you outsource and no matter who you go to it doesn't matter when you outsource its understanding that they will never be one hundred percent right? So a lot of a lot of businesses I work with the outsourcing they're like. Well, you know, I sent my images, but they missed these too. Look, at the end of the day, if they can get me ninety five percent of the way there in ninety eight percent of the way there that's good enough because they're saving the hours of time. It's never going to be perfect, it's. Never going to be a hundred percent. So you've got to find a company that you feel confident partnering with because it is a partnership. They become your partner. They have a stake in your business, so to speak. Because if you fail right, they fail, right? The more successful they could make you, the more they can help you sell big prints, the more work you're going to send them. Right? So there you have to find somebody who sees that partnership and has that vested interest. But it is. It is an ongoing process, it's not something that's gonna happen in twenty four hours. So what's gonna have to happen is when you outsource. The first time we outsource, we set him a test job hey, guys, here's fifty images, check him out. Here's my editing style. They go to my web so evolve that it went to my website checked out my work. Okay, we see he likes ah, grittier higher contrast, cooler tone edit. So they sent me back those sample images. What do you think? So, yes. No. Maybe so. I know a little bit too. Ah, warm. A little bit too cool. Right? And it's this ebb and flow. Well, that should only take a week to get dialed in. And so make sure you do that. You have to do that to make sure you're in sync with them. And your risk is minimal rights and fifty images. It's a no brainer. Well, it's so if yourself at it and we're gonna head it some images two weeks or less clients have to see those images. If you outsource what'll end up happening is you will take a little portable external drive. Okay? And that's, what you're going to send so what'll happen for us is we copy images to external drive. Okay, then on, we send two to three drives out of weak. So we send ah, drive on monday because that gets all the wedding images out uh in thursday, so those were typically when the when the drives go out monday and thursday sometimes if we're having a really big week we might get you know three drives out in a week but that's our typical flow monday that gets our weddings out the door so think about it I shot a wedding on saturday by monday the images are already into going into post production uh and so we drop in the mail so mayl drive we're not doing I don't do ft peaches takes too long upload those which you can we just drop the hard drive in the mail and it goes out there so mayl drive to evolve okay then from there this is the beautiful part about all this they return to me ex mp files so if you're working within the light room environment which we do they email back ex mp files so now all I got to do and eventually they'll mail me back my drive but I don't want to wait for that hard drive to come back to me so what's gonna happen is I get an email going hey kendra images already ex mps attached in a zip file I then take those ex mps import him right in the light room we're ready to go okay now I will scan through those because nothing's perfect when you outsource right you still have to make sure they made the right decisions I'll scan through and go on you know I like this image they opted not to incorporate it I'm going five start so we keep it and we'll sink the settings right cause you're in light room it takes two seconds to sink settings from one image to another and that's it so they're usually ninety five to ninety eight percent of the way there for me uh rarely is anyone going to be one hundred percent of the way there but I'm okay because now instead of spending a wedding would take me eight to twelve hours to process senior chute might take me two three hours to process now I'm spending maybe fifteen minutes on a senior job so they saved me all that time and what am I doing with that time shooting morning because that's where I make my money questions on this I saw you had a question that we're just getting ready go around with what we do let's talk about where you hid in that two week mark yeah but same reasons as other people volume issue I generally get images up that night because I want images up that night so I'll go through and I'll pick my images and I self edit everything I'll trash what I want to trash I'll run a rock conversion going to light room pick what I want to do so but it's you know the rock conversion takes three three hours on a senior chute right takes overnight on a wedding. So I can't do those unless I do it straight from the raw file as you grow there's, no scalability that one hundred percent agree. You cannot do what I do today if I want to be anywhere different than where I am today. Yeah, I can I can say wholeheartedly one hundred percent honest that without evolved I would not. My business would not be where it is today. I can I can say that without it out, right? There's no there's, no fluff in that statement, they have allowed my business to scale by being being a partner to us. So, you know, without them I don't know how I would have grown grown my business, right? And as I add shooters and more shoots air coming in holy cow, I am not gonna be the one sitting there editing. So how about you yawn? I tell my clients two weeks, but I'm hitting more two and a half to three weeks so that I know changing gonna have that is going to become more and more stressful for you if you want work life balance. I'm about a week and a half, but of course I'm doing two a, m and three a m and then get up and go to work the next day yes that's insane right? And that's how that's what was happening to me? I was sitting in bed editing, you know, and taylor and I would, you know, lay in bed and she's watching tv and she's having a conversation with me I don't know if you guys have the same problem with your spouse. She talked to me and I'm like grunting out or, you know, I'm like yeah uh uh, yeah, yeah, yeah, and I'm like then the next day she's like, you know, you agreed to this, right? I'm like what? I didn't know what you talking about. We don't talk about that she'd get pissed right? Because you're I'm agreeing to things that I'm not listening to her, so now I'm ignoring her so that's why I had to get her into the business now this way she can now just yes me to death all the time. So you guys out there be honest right in I want to know how quickly are you turning around your images? Because if you guys are all saying you're doing in two weeks, I think you're lying because I've seen way too many people where it's like six weeks for a wedding or longer to turn them around, so do we have any questions because I'm gonna go and do a little editing here we have quite a few questions all right way to get through so many people are curious about this many people are asking including t photo what is the average cost out sos outsource photos do they typically charge per image and then other people had asked is there a difference between color correction and like an advanced at it yeah you talk about that yeah those are all great questions by the way so there is definitely a difference between color correcting images calling images which is the selection process and then more of an advanced at it so I would say there's three stages for me I outsource all three stages you could outsource any single stage for that matter so the first thing the first option eye's going to be around the selection process right so the that she's called the selection process process selection um color correction ah and then advanced at it so the selection process that's the calling right I took two hundred images three hundred images for hundred images I need you to narrow these down on my best two hundred my best to fifty that's that process there's a price per image without a doubt in every solutions different I wish I could tell you off the top of my head what evolve is I have no idea you know go to their website evolve that it's dot com check it out but so there's a small feet pennies per image to get this election down. Well, then let's say they take these images down from five hundred to two hundred images. Now you want all two hundred color corrected there's another per image price again pennies on lee on the images that are being color corrected so not all of them that have been submitted just the ones that are being color corrected to me this is in fact the heavy lifting. This is what I want them to do for me. And by the way, everyone out evolve at it they're all they're all photographers, all of them photographers in one nature another why is that important to me? It's important? I'll tell you why because the heavy lifting this election process how important is that? They need to know the difference between a good image and a bad image. They need to know the difference between here's an image that south and sell and here's one he can't. So I'm relying on them in this stage of the game to get those images down to my best to fifty well then here's what I have them do I have them pick on a senior chute? I have them do ah twenty five advanced at it's now the advanced that it's khun be anywhere from one dollar per, which is not expensive to three dollars per and a three dollar edit would be something along the lines if we can bring it up while I'm talking that space needle photo that I edited that would be what would a three dollar at it from them okay now I did that myself but that would be throwing some texture on it a little bit grittier oven added that is a three dollar ready you guys don't want pay three bucks to have an image like that process I mean you can do it yourself but then you got to figure out the value of your time and is your time worth three dollars so this is on you on how you want to run your business in this advanced edit ah st so those are the kind of things you want to consider but I would say this is a relatively inexpensive process all things considered as you go to grow your business yeah question so in the copyright workflow and if you send him off to the copyright office where in that process do you do that I do not send my image is off to the copyright office portrait I think are a little bit tougher I don't know that in my world I'm sending copyright off teo portrait image is not your doing landscape architectural things like that then I might consider sending those off to the copyright office I don't send any of my stuff off that's another yet another workflow that you're going to have to contend with and then you've got issues with facebook too so if you're posting these images to facebook according to the terms and agreements of facebook technically you're waving your copyright and they can do whatever they want with those images so there's you know, I think our industries in an interesting state right now figuring out copyrighted I would say very similar to what the music industry went through in the days of napster and things like that so you know, because isn't there some lawsuits going on with some picture sharing sides because they're doing things with our images as we submit him so well got to be conscious and protect our images so watermark everything that goes out there so especially facebook we put our logo on it we'll take one more sure a question from um from melanie mahone in do you ever have a specific vision for an edit of a photo that you execute yourself or do you trust your outsourcer to do it and do you do they just learn your style? Another question was do you have the same person at evolved? Do your edits over and over or I do I am I am very extremely specific with who's working my images so my editor is jade she's you know she's here in the united states that's a big thing for me that I have access to her if I've got images issues with my images it's not going into some black hole in some country somewhere where I have no access to my editors this is somebody who has learned my style over the last four years so that's become, you know, an evolutionary process, so to speak, by being ableto work and have access to my people what do I do as faras workflow? I have them do all the heavy lifting. That is not where I want to spend my time. I then have them do a handful of what I call advanced at it. But then from every shoot okay, whether it's a wedding, whether it's a senior I take my top three, five, six images and then I do salad it's. Okay, so let's just say five images per by sal. This is because the truth is they could do it, they absolutely do it. They're very talented and what they do. But these are my jobs. These are my images, and I'm the one who's going to sit down later this afternoon or taylor is going to sit down later this afternoon and sell them to the client. So I wanted I'm very heavy handed on these three to five images because those are the three to five I'm going to say to the client, these are art pieces for your home these are ones you want to sell as or have his large prints in your home. I want final say, as the creative director on what those three to five images are. So that is a perfect segway into watch let's edit a few images. I want you to see what I'm doing, how I do it, uh and you know, we've got about twenty five minutes to break, so I'm gonna take you through that process in the next twenty five minutes. So let's, go over here if we have a question or two while queuing this up, yeah, I was wondering, is there a minimum when you outsource to whether it's evolve or somebody else like, say you just want to outsource fifty images of your smaller scale? No, no there's, no image are or limitation what there is is probably, you know, minimum order something that's yeah, that's, what? Twenty five thirty box usually, but if you're so many fifty images, you're going to hit that one likely anyway, so yeah, give it a try. The thing I encourage everybody do is just go check him out, try it, what's the worst case, you know you don't like it, don't do it again, but give it a try and you might find that it changes your changes, your world

Class Description

Join Sal Cincotta for his "take no prisoner" approach to the business of high school senior photography. In this photography business course, Sal digs into marketing plans, business plans, pricing, and packaging. Sal also shows how to create an ambassador program so that your kids are talking about you and advocating your business in their schools.

This business course also includes a series of live in-studio and on-location photo fashion shoots, showing you how to capture the most of-the-moment trends, poses, and backgrounds. Sal also covers why high school senior photography is at the core of every successful photography business. Seniors become brides and brides become long-term family clients.

a Creativelive Student

I have been shooting seniors now for 6 years. I have to say this is the best course I have ever had online! My head is still spinning trying to process it all. (luckily I gave in and bought the course :) I was going to be printing my marketing magazine for my seniors this week. After the first day of this series, I completely changed my pricing structure and felt so much better about how it would work for me! That is what is amazing about this series. It has incredible amounts of information that the newest photographer to the seasoned photographer can take and use in the business. I watched all three, took notes like crazy; watched again and still could not get all the info I wanted on paper. So I did the logical thing. I bought it! I was so impressed with the down-to-earth style of teaching that Sal and Taylor use and how open they were to sharing so many helpful aspects of how they do business. I really wanted to buy another backdrop, but I truly believe my $99 for this series will reap way more benefit for my business. Thanks so much Sal and Taylor! Now... to go redo that marketing info. :)

a Creativelive Student

This course is amazing. Sal offers a truly comprehensive path toward success in a step-by-step way that leaves nothing out. You can tell he's very secure in his success and his skills and, therefore, can truly share his knowledge. This workshop is great for amateurs and experienced alike. And, unlike many other presenters, Sal doesn't spend exorbitant amounts of time bemoaning the existence of "shoot and burners" ... instead, he inspired even them to raise their game - benefiting the industry overall. Nice. You must buy this workshop.